While understanding interest group systems remains crucial to understanding the functioning of advanced democracies, the study of interest groups remains a somewhat niche field within political science. Nevertheless, during the last 15 years, the academic interest in group politics has grown and we reflect on the state of the current literature. The main objective is to take stock, consider the main empirical and theoretical/ conceptual achievements, but most importantly, to reflect upon potential fertile future research avenues. In our view interest group studies would be reinvigorated and would benefit from being reintegrated within the broader field of political science, and more particularly, the comparative study of government. The study of interest group politics-that is the organisation, aggregation, articulation, and intermediation of societal interests that seek to shape public policies-is a relatively small field within political science. There is no special journal devoted to interest group studies, and mainstream political science journals publish less on interest groups than they do on other areas of political science such as electoral, legislative, and party politics. 1 This phenomenon is not due to interest group scholarship being less advanced or less sophisticated than the other sub-fields. It is largely an artefact of size: fewer scholars work in the group area than in party politics or policy studies. There are also more substantive reasons for the paucity of interest group research: several conceptual, methodological and disciplinary barriers militate against the accumulation of knowledge. Nevertheless, during the last 15 years, the academic interest in group politics has grown. This is evidenced by numerous empirical studiesqualitative and quantitative-within the fields of European Union studies, comparative European politics, and American politics. In recent years, the

The multilevel governance literature on European politics argues that supranational governing arrangements have increased their autonomy vis-à-vis national governments. As private interests increasingly bypass national levels and become active in transnational Euro-level policy networks, national governments are no longer the sole interface between supranational and national levels. In contrast, the European Union might also be conceptualised as a two-level interstate negotiation system, an approach assuming that interests are formed and aggregated at the national level. Societal interests enter the fray of European negotiations via national executives, and private interests bypassing the national level are considered as a rather marginal, even irrelevant, phenomenon. In addition, both accounts expect different outcomes regarding which sorts of private interestsdiffuse or specific -seek and gain access to both domestic and European public actors. By analysing the varying network strategies of domestic private actors, in particular interest associations, this article explores some propositions held by these two approaches. After a more comprehensive outline of some hypotheses, evidence collected among public and private actors at both the domestic (Belgian) and European levels will be analysed. In general, the results suggest that Euro-level networks of domestic interests are substantially related to their structural location within the domestic realm, that network strategies tend to be quite bureaucratic and that the sort of interest represented -diffuse or specific -has a considerable effect on gaining and seeking access.

Abstract. Although EU institutions and policies create additional opportunities for national interest groups to influence policy-making, not all domestic groups make use of the extended niche provided by the EU. Lagging Europeanization has often been explained by resource-based accounts, for instance the group's staff resources or financial strength determines the ability to Europeanize. This article explores an alternative explanation and analyzes the importance of ties that bind national interest groups to their constituencies, their critical resource dependencies and their immediate environment. Our main conclusion is that Europeanization is not just shaped by properties of the EU system, but also by the interest group's embeddedness in its immediate environment.Acknowledgements. This paper forms part of a larger project funded by the Fund for Scientific ResearchFlanders on the political strategies of interest groups that seek access to and influence over the EU's external trade policies with regard to the WTO (G

This article describes and explains the variable extent to which domestic interest organizations seek access to the multiple venues provided by the European system of governance. A multivariate analysis of data collected in four member states-France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germanyreveals substantial variance in multilevel venue shopping, differences that disconfirm some descriptive accounts reported in the Europeanization literature. Surprising is that French organizations develop extensive multilevel strategies while the strategies of Dutch organizations are rather weakly Europeanized. Our analyses offer a better understanding of the factors that stimulate domestic interest groups to seek access to European Union-level policy venues. Factors such as the nature of policy issues in which groups are involved, the group's relation with domestic parties, and overall domestic embeddedness significantly explains multilevel venueshopping. In contrast, other factors such as policy sector or the group's resources generate little explanatory power.The institutional environment in which European and national interest organizations operate is increasingly a multilevel arena consisting of various national arenas and the European Union (EU) level. In such a context of multilevel governance (MLG), national governments are not longer the sole interface between the supranational and the national level; interest organizations may seek access to a variety of venues situated at multiple levels of governance. Although much of the literature on EU interest groups concentrates on finding a proper characterization of interest intermediation at the EU level, since the last 10 years, a substantial literature developed on how the European interest group system feeds back into traditional modes of interest representation at the member state level. In this respect, it is often argued that European integration substantially shapes domestic systems of interest representation in terms of the groups that matter for government and the strategies they deploy when seeking political influence (Eising 2006;Falkner 2000).In this article, we investigate how and to what extent additional layers of government provide alternative channels of interest representation for

No abstract

This article seeks to explain the use of inside and outside lobbying by organised interests at global diplomatic conferences. At first sight, the lobbying at these venues is puzzling as it does not seem to be a very fruitful way to acquire influence. The use of outside strategies especially is perplexing because most aspects of international negotiations fall outside of the purview of national constituencies. It is argued in this article, however, that the presence of outside lobbying is not so puzzling if lobbying is seen both as a way to attain influence and as a way to pursue organisational maintenance goals. Empirically, the article draws on interview data with 232 interest group representatives that participated at either the 2012 session of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Geneva, or the 2011 (Durban) and 2012 (Doha) United Nations Climate Conferences. The analysis demonstrates that organisational needs, and especially the competition actors face in obtaining resources, significantly affects the relative focus of organised interests on inside and outside lobbying.

The interaction between organised interests and policy makers is an important ingredient of contemporary political systems. In earlier work, interest group scholars have distinguished groups that enjoy access to consultation arrangements from those that are bound to stand on the sideline. Frequently, these insiders are considered to be equally connected to public authorities. Yet their degree of 'insiderness' differs significantly. By unpacking the set of organised interests that have gained access, this article distinguishes core insiders from groups that occupy a more peripheral position in an interest intermediation system. Empirically, we demonstrate and explain varying degrees of insiderness in the community of insider groups in Belgium, using the extensiveness of representation in advisory bodies as a proxy for access. Our findings show that, although nowadays a diverse set of organised interests gets involved in policy-making processes, the inner circle is dominated by traditional economic interests.

No abstract